Mayoral directive 2024-88 requires all real estate listings to use word ‘spacious’ regardless of square footage, instructs New Yorkers to think differently about space
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Eric Sutton-Walsh signed an executive directive Tuesday requiring all residential real estate listings in the five boroughs to describe available units as “spacious” regardless of actual square footage, effective immediately, telling reporters at City Hall that the directive “removes an outdated linguistic barrier to housing optimism” and that New Yorkers who feel their apartments are small need to “reframe their relationship with square footage in a growth mindset context,” a statement that one reporter in the press pool audibly wrote down and then stared at for several seconds.
The Directive
Directive 2024-88, “Toward a Language of Residential Abundance,” requires that all apartment listings posted on platforms operating within city jurisdiction include the word “spacious” in the first line of any physical description, regardless of whether the apartment is a studio, a junior one-bedroom, a converted closet, or what the real estate industry has taken to calling a “micro-unit” and what a straight line of honesty would call a room with a bathroom attached.
The directive does not mandate any changes to actual apartment dimensions, rent levels, building codes, or the fundamental economic conditions that have produced a median one-bedroom rent of $3,800 per month in Manhattan and a vacancy rate of 1.4 percent citywide. It does, however, mandate that these conditions be described using language the mayor’s office says is “more conducive to a healthy housing psychology.”
“New York is a city of possibility,” Mayor Sutton-Walsh said. “The language we use to describe our living spaces shapes how we experience those spaces. When we say spacious, we are not making a claim about square footage. We are making a claim about the expansive possibilities of the New York experience, the abundant potential of a life lived here, in this city, where anything is possible, including paying $4,200 a month for four hundred square feet in a building where the elevator works most of the time.”
Real Estate Industry Responds With Enthusiasm
The Real Estate Board of New York described the directive as “a bold and welcome reframe” and confirmed that member brokers were “fully prepared to comply immediately,” noting that “spacious” was already among the most common words in New York City real estate listings and that formalization of its mandatory use would require minimal adjustment to existing practice.
The board did not specify what percentage of its current listings describe units as spacious that are, by any geometric standard, not spacious, because that data, if it exists, is not public. Industry observers note that New York real estate listings have historically used the word to describe any apartment whose square footage can be expressed as a number, and that the directive therefore primarily represents an administrative codification of something brokers were already doing, which is perhaps the most New York possible outcome of a housing policy initiative.
The New York Post ran the directive under the headline “MAYOR’S MAGIC WORDS: CITY BOSS THINKS CALLING YOUR TINY APT ‘SPACIOUS’ FIXES HOUSING CRISIS,” which the mayor’s office described as “characteristically reductive” and which achieved approximately 2.4 million views in its first twelve hours, making it the most-read housing policy story in the city’s recent history, which may be the most damning possible commentary on the policy itself.
What Residents Think
In Astoria, Queens, 28-year-old teacher Monica Feliciano-Park said she paid $2,100 per month for a studio apartment of approximately 380 square feet in which her bed, when fully extended, touched three walls, and that she did not feel the addition of the word “spacious” to future listings would materially affect her ability to access a larger or more affordable apartment.
“I would like a housing voucher,” she said. “I would like rent stabilization expansion. I would like the city to build more housing. I would like, at minimum, the city to stop allowing buildings to sit vacant as investment properties. I would accept ‘spacious’ as a bonus on top of those things. I would not accept it as a replacement for those things, which is what is being offered.”
The Gothamist spoke with twelve additional renters across the five boroughs. None said the directive addressed their primary housing concerns. Three said they found it “darkly funny.” Two said it made them want to move. One said they were already moving, to New Jersey, and that this had been their plan for months and was not specifically triggered by the directive but that the timing was “appropriate.”
Phase Two
The mayor’s office confirmed that a Phase Two of the linguistic reframe initiative is in development, which will extend mandatory optimistic language requirements to transit (“efficient journey”), restaurant inspection ratings (“creatively managed kitchen”), and public school class sizes (“intimate learning environment”). Phase Two is expected to be announced after the next polling cycle. The city’s vacancy rate remains 1.4 percent. The median rent remains $3,800. The apartments remain the size they are. They are, however, spacious.
The mayor’s office released a follow-up statement clarifying that Directive 2024-88 applied specifically to rental listings and not to owned properties, short-term rentals, or commercial spaces, a limitation that housing advocates said reduced the scope of the initiative’s impact to approximately the portion of the housing market that was already using the word “spacious” at a rate approaching saturation. The follow-up statement also noted that enforcement would be handled by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, which confirmed it was “aware of the directive” and was “developing implementation guidance,” a process its spokesperson estimated would be complete “in the coming months.” The median rent, in the coming months, is expected to remain approximately what it is now. The word “spacious” will be in the listings.
Spaciously covering New York at The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine.
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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/nyc-mayor-executive-order-all-apartments-spacious-housing-crisis/